fairyland (early name of Concord’s Hapgood Wright Town Forest area)

The Town Forest has a varied topography, and
thus includes diverse ecosystems.
Some twelve thousand years ago the area was covered with the last of the New England glacial ice sheets; the
retreat of the glacier left an
“outwash plain” which today we recognize in Brister’s Hill, the high
land toward Route 2 from Fairyland Pond. This hill rises steeply some, seventy-five feet above the pond, with the
typical sandy and gravel soil of glacial drift. Currently pine and oak
predominate, although earlier in the
century the American chestnut was present in good numbers, until the onset of
the chestnut blight. The man made pond,
created in the latter part of the last century by damming a portion ‘of the swamp,
and the large swamp area were once part of the glacial Lake Concord which
submerged much of the lowlands of the Town. Here the soil is typically
peaty with attendant growth such as the
swamp or red maple, and here still may be found the Clintonia which Thoreau mentions so frequently “in
his” Journals. Toward Concord
center from the pond is an area of
“bottom land” with a sandy loamy soil, which has ‘been known, ‘as “Hoar’s
plantation;” still today may be seen some of the white pine, spruce and larch planted there some hundred
years ago.

Whether or not Fairyland
was a camping ground for Squaw Sachem and the Musketaquidian
Indians, as Margaret Sidney once speculated, can remain-an open
question} however, we do know that Fairyland has been enjoyed by many of
Concord’s famous citizens, such Emerson and Charming and most especially, of course,
Thoreau. Thoreau’s Journals contain
frequent references to the area; he
describes giant ferns two to three feet high in “Hubbard’s shady swamp (the land was owned by Ebenezer Hubbard at
that time) and the “dark blue
indigo Clintonia berries.”

Mrs. Hawthorne, in her Journal of April 29,
1852, writes: “Mr. Emerson and Ellery Channing passed along; and Mr.
Emerson asked Julian to go with the children to Fairy Land (in Walden Woods). He went, in a state of ecstatic bliss. He brought
me home, in a basket, cowslips,
anemones and violets.”

Of
Fairyland and its miniature lake, Mrs. Daniel Lothrop
writes: ” Ebby Hubbard owned it, and it was afterward sold to a
public-spirited citizen who spent much time and thought and money on it. It was
a large tract of rough, unpromising land, your beau­tiful pond had to be
evolved by the generous hand that has thrown this spot open to whomever cared to enter in.

“Emerson’s
youngest daughter1 purchased Fairy­land
several years ago, in order to save its trees from the woodman’s axe.
This romantic spot may be called a suburb of Walden, as it is only separated by
the width of a country road from Walden woods. Fairyland has a pretty pond, embowered in trees, and a delicious
spring, cool and clear enough to have been
patronized by the fairies. It has always been a favorite haunt for the
children of the village, and many of the school children have often used it as
a play and picnic ground. Some thirty years ago, the pupils of a well-known
school used to hold fairy masques and costume parties there, and if a way­farer had strayed in, he would have been surprised
to find himself in the center of a fairy ring or gypsy carnival. Now
quiet citizens use it as a pleasant place for a summer stroll; and berrying
parties in the ‘summer, and nutting excursions in the autumn often visit it and
returnwith abundant harvests. Climbing up its steep path .by the
spring, the visitor soon enters Walden -woods, and threading his way ‘ through
the straight. Lines of pine trees: which com­pose Thoreau’s orchard [recently burned
to the ground], he can cross the patch which
was cultivated with six miles of beans by the ‘Walden hermit.”2